#18: Where the Gospel Meets Singleness

#18: Where the Gospel Meets Singleness

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey guys, it’s Jesse. I wanna do one quick reminder before we start the episode. We still have our special matching grant in place between now and the end of the year. Every dollar that you donate will automatically be doubled. We’ve had an incredible community of donors come together to create this special $50,000 matching grant. But in order for us to get the full amount, that means that we need your help. So if you appreciate this podcast or the ministry work that we do or the blogs that we publish or the resources that we put out and you wanna support urban ministry, head over to lovethyneighborhood.org. Head over to the donate page. Every dollar that you give will automatically be doubled between now and the end of the year. Thank you so much for your support. We could not do this without you. And now — let’s listen to the episode.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Some names in our story have been changed to protect identity.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Can I ask you a personal question?

RACHEL SZABO: Yes.

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re single—

RACHEL SZABO: Yes.

JESSE EUBANKS: How old are you?

RACHEL SZABO: 31.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so you’re 31 and you’re single. Are you single by conviction — like you want to be single, you’ve chosen a lifestyle of singleness — or would you say you’re single because of circumstance?

RACHEL SZABO: Probably circumstance.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so then that would lead to my next question, which is — Are you open to the idea of trying something brand new?

RACHEL SZABO: Are you gonna send me on a blind date? Because the answer is no.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so here’s what I’m getting at. I’m trying to like very politely basically ask you if you would be willing to try online dating.

RACHEL SZABO: Sure.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, I want you to set up a profile…

RACHEL SZABO: I’m not going on a date with somebody.

JESSE EUBANKS: You would not go on a date?

RACHEL SZABO: I probably wouldn’t. 

JESSE EUBANKS: The whole thing is this. We’re going out into the unknown. You, Rachel Szabo, are going out into the unknown.

RACHEL SZABO: My mom thinks it’s a great idea.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know what? On this, your mom and I definitely agree.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social justice and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: And today’s episode is where the gospel meets singleness. 

RACHEL SZABO: And just to be clear, this episode is not about finding me a date. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But it could be. But in all seriousness, singleness is a really broad topic and it’s really important that we look at it from a bunch of different angles. And so as we explore singleness in this episode, we’re going to hear from several different people in different life stages about their experiences being single.

RACHEL SZABO: And I wanna say this too, like this episode is not just for single people. So if you’re listening to this and you’re married, don’t think ‘Well, I can check out of this episode because it doesn’t apply to me.’ No, it does. This is for married folks too.

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: So there was a recent Pew Research study that found that there are more single adults in America than ever before. 

RACHEL SZABO: That’s right. So this study actually found that 42% of the U.S. adult population is single.

JESSE EUBANKS: And to be honest, like that is something that I’ve really struggled to wrap my brain around. Y’know, I got married when I was 25. So I feel like I kind of understand the single life up through that age, but like people that are single past 25, it’s an experience that’s kind of foreign to me and I really don’t understand it. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, well there’s kind of been a shift in perspective on marriage, and so, you know, 20, 30 years ago, marriage was seen as a cornerstone. Y’know, this is a foundation, you build your life on it. And so people would get married a lot earlier in life. But now, marriage is not seen as a cornerstone. It’s seen as more of a capstone. So that means before you get married, you need to have a good education, you need to get the good job, you need to be financially stable, get the house, be self-sufficient, and then ‘Okay, now I can be married.’

JESSE EUBANKS: So instead of it being like the first thing you build your life on, it’s the last thing you do after you’ve built the rest of your life. 

RACHEL SZABO: Correct. And so it’s not that strange for me. But the thing that I wrestle with — so I am a single person and I am in my early 30’s. And so for me, it’s not so much about why are there so many single people. It’s more like ‘How do I live as a satisfied single person? And, y’know, should I even be satisfied as a single person?’

JESSE EUBANKS: I think that those are fair questions, especially since the church and even the Bible routinely talks about marriage and family. Y’know, we have God’s institution of marriage in Genesis chapter 2. We have numerous passages that talk about husbands and wives and children. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean we talk about family all the time in the church. And I kind of wondered — do we really have a good understanding of what God actually has to say about family?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, I think for that, we need to turn over to the gospel of Mark. So in Mark chapter three, Jesus is inside his family’s house. And there are so many people packed into this house to hear him or be healed by him that the Scriptures say ‘the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat.’

RACHEL SZABO: It’s like imagine, y’know, you’ve had so many people in your house that you can’t even weave in and out of the crowd to get to your own refrigerator to get a snack. Like that’s nuts.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, and that is exactly what Jesus’ family thought. Y’know, they thought he had gone nuts. So they come to the house and naturally they can’t get inside, so they essentially play a game of telephone until their message finally reaches Jesus — ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’ And then in verse 33, Jesus responds —  ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And then in asking this question, Jesus deconstructs the earthly family unit. 

RACHEL SZABO: Which is honestly a little strange because family is something that everybody wants. We all want a place to belong, a place where we fit in. So why would Jesus deconstruct the family? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, the nuclear family is one of the obvious places we find that. So Rach, we did our own survey for this episode and we sent it out to our mailing list and our social media. And one of the questions that we asked was — ‘Do you want to eventually be married?’ And we received well over a hundred responses, and overwhelmingly 97% said yes, they do want to be married, they do want to have a family.

RACHEL SZABO: Actually it’s funny that we’re talking about family because one of the people that I spoke to for this episode was a woman named Sarah Martin. And for Sarah, growing up in the church, family was something that was expected of you.  

So Sarah grew up in the church. And the church that she grew up in, it was expected that all of the girls would grow up, you would get married, you would have kids, you would be a stay-at-home mom. So here’s Sarah.

SARAH MARTIN: In our church there was only two single women that I knew, and I remember thinking this myself. I was like ‘Well something’s wrong with them.’ I don’t know, I guess maybe I heard a lot of ‘bless their hearts’ type of thing or whatever, but if you were single, single equaled like weird, sad. 

RACHEL SZABO: But Sarah knew that wasn’t her destiny. So, y’know, once she graduated high school, she started dating. And she dated while she was in college. She dated after college. And then all of a sudden, Sarah found herself exiting her twenties and she was still single. Now she was the one who was actually weird and sad.

SARAH MARTIN: All but two of my friends are married with kids. So, y’know, when I go home, I’m always like ‘other.’ You know, I wonder about how they speak about me, like ‘Poor Sarah.’

RACHEL SZABO: So up to this point I’m like totally tracking with Sarah. Like her story is similar to mine. Y’know, I sometimes do feel other around my friends that are married. But then, Sarah’s response to her singleness took this strange turn.

SARAH MARTIN: Maybe I am doing something wrong, so I kinda took it on as an experiment. Um, I joined multiple Christian dating websites and then um, I asked friends of friends through Facebook if they would participate in this project. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, wait. Did she just say project? Wait, what project is she talking about? I don’t — what is happening right now?

RACHEL SZABO: So Sarah’s an artist, and she likes to use her art to kind of explore different problems in the world. And so what Sarah decides to do is she’s gonna get on all of these Christian dating websites and she’s gonna ask all these different single Christian men to give her a list of what they expect in an ideal spouse.

SARAH MARTIN: Anything that comes to mind, like what are some characteristics? What would they look like? What would you guys be doing on the weekends on a day off? Things like that.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, and then Sarah is gonna try and be whatever this person is that they’ve described and then she’s gonna take a picture of herself or a video of herself as this person, send it to the men, and say ‘Is this right?’ 

SARAH MARTIN: I would have three chances to meet their expectations and become that person for them.

JESSE EUBANKS: This is like, this is so bold, like I either feel like this is gonna be like so amazing or just so terrible. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: So like did guys actually like go along with this?

RACHEL SZABO: Well actually, not at first. 

SARAH MARTIN: I got kicked off of one dating site. Um, a pastor who was on the dating site turned me in because he was really upset that I wasn’t there legitimately to date. So anyway, it’s kind of funny to get like a rejection letter from a dating website. (laughs)

JESSE EUBANKS (laughs): That’s like, that’s like the dating police gestapo like came after her.

RACHEL SZABO: Right, that’s like the ultimate rejection. (laughter) Okay, so after that, eventually Sarah did find 20 guys on these dating websites who said they would do it. And then the expectations started coming in. And at first, y’know, the expectations were pretty general, pretty normal. 

SARAH MARTIN: There was this super sweet guy in the military and he just wanted somebody to tell him happy birthday and have a conversation with him, so we did over Skype.

JESSE EUBANKS: Aw, that’s like so sweet.

RACHEL SZABO: I know, right? Like that’s cute.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I kinda like that.

RACHEL SZABO: But then, it gets weird, okay? It’s about to get really weird. Because some of the other men had expectations that were strangely particular.

SARAH MARTIN: ‘I want to come home from work and I want you to be making dinner in a dress and serving me impeccably.’ And I’m like ‘Alright, ‘K.’  But then it would get even like more specific. ‘And I want you to wear this certain kind of polka dot dress.’ So I go out and buy a polka dot dress and I would do the video and then he was like ‘Mmm that was really close. I don’t like that dress. I don’t like your hair. Can you do it again?’

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh.

RACHEL SZABO: This guy even went so far as to say ‘I want your dress to be navy with white polka dots.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: I, I feel really gross right now. Like I feel like I need to go like take a shower. Like this is like —

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah it’s weird.

JESSE EUBANKS: Ahh, it’s like so disturbing.

RACHEL SZABO: And what’s really weird is this guy wasn’t the only guy who had a very specific image in mind.

SARAH MARTIN: They wanted me to physically like alter myself. Several people were like ‘You’re a pretty girl, but if you lost like 15 to 20 pounds…’  Like that was a normal thing, so I did.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold on. This is like next level. Like she’s physically altering herself because of their requests.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean like Sarah’s totally committed to ‘this is the project, this is what I said I’m gonna do.’ And whatever they want, she’s doing it.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s like Sarah’s like their little doll and they can do with her like whatever they want. Like that is super weird.

SARAH MARTIN: Other people wanted me to pose like a Christmas card, a family Christmas card, so I did borrow babies and children of my friends to accommodate. Y’know, one guy was like an off-the-grid type guy that wanted me to be like self-sufficient, and learning to shoot a rifle was interesting. Learning how to sew and doing all this stuff that I didn’t know how to do, or I had to learn how to play the guitar a little bit. That took like a long time.

RACHEL SZABO: So actually it took Sarah two years to complete all of the requests from these 20 men. And some of them were so demanding that actually she didn’t meet the expectation in the three tries that she gave them. 

SARAH MARTIN: I had one guy get really angry with me because I didn’t meet his expectations after the third time, like he sent me an email that said ‘Do you need me to do this video for you and give you notes so you know how to do it right?’ And I was like ‘Wow.’

JESSE EUBANKS: As weird as it is to hear like all of this stuff, I don’t think Sarah’s like trying to villainize these guys. Y’know, Sarah was open about what the project was, they knew what they were getting into, like no one’s trying to deceive anybody else in this situation. And I think the reality is that Sarah’s not showing the unrealistic expectations of just a few guys, like she’s showing us all of us have unrealistic expectations, y’know, whether it’s about a romantic relationship or a marriage or our kids or a job or our bodies. And I think what’s brilliant about her project is that she’s putting flesh and bone on our expectations. Like she is saying our expectations out loud and then showing them back to us. And that, that is what is so uncomfortable about this.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so actually what Sarah did once she was finished with this project is she took all of the photos and videos of herself as well as all of her correspondence with these 20 men and she turned the whole thing into an art exhibit. And I went to a showing of this exhibit recently here in Louisville. And here’s what the people at the exhibit had to say about Sarah’s project.

AUDIO CLIP: It looks like a lot of work was put into this… The first word that comes to mind is, is icky, I think. It’s very gross to me… The detail is shocking… The fact that it was expressed so intentionally like became extremely revealing in an uncomfortable way… It also kinda sucks because I know I’ve had like those expectations in the past…

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, and I think that we all, guys and girls, like we all need to understand that there’s our expectations and then there’s reality. And the wider the gap is between those two things — between our expectations and our actual experience — the harder the fall is gonna be. 

RACHEL SZABO: I’m like ‘Dude, why even try? Like if this is what’s gonna take to get a guy and to not be single anymore? Like no thank you. I’ll just be single.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, okay, so it’s funny that she should say that because I’ve actually got a story for you. And it’s actually about Leandro. 

RACHEL SZABO: Leandro. From the office? From our office? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes, that Leandro.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh, this is gonna be gooood.

JESSE EUBANKS: We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets singleness. We’re trying to answer the fundamental question — what does it mean to be satisfied in singleness?

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay so we just heard from Sarah Martin, who did an art project exploring singleness. Now, we’re gonna hear from a guy named Leandro Lozada.

RACHEL SZABO: I can’t wait to hear what he had to say about this. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so for our listeners, so Leandro is actually our Program Director here at Love Thy Neighborhood and he’s from Puebla, Mexico. Rach, so as you know, before he ever worked with us, he had come to the states to work at a summer camp. But what you might not know is that while he was there he met a girl named Samantha. Uh, so here’s Leandro.

LEANDRO LOZADA: Yeah, I was madly in love with Samantha. My heart was triggered by her, uh, some facial expressions that she had, she was sweet. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay so Leandro’s like a total romantic, and so naturally like Leandro thought to himself, like this could be the one. And so once camp was over and Leandro went back to his home in Mexico, he stayed in contact with Samantha by sending her emails. But not just like ‘Hey, what’s up?’ It was like looong emails.

LEANDRO LOZADA: I was probably writing, y’know, two, three pages emails like maybe every other week or something like that. I called her too. We also talked to each other. I probably called her once a week or once every two weeks. I checked her Facebook several times a day.

RACHEL SZABO: Gosh, if I had known Leandro at this point, I would have been like ‘Hey man, like chill the heck out.’ He’s being a total creeper right now.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well the folks who did know him at the time did have advice for him. And it wasn’t just that he needed to chill out. Leandro, you need to be satisfied. You need to be satisfied in Christ.

LEANDRO LOZADA: Y’know, everyone tells you you have to be satisfied in Christ. Uh, but for me I could not understand what that meant. Y’know in practical terms does it mean that I don’t allow my emotions to go after her? Like am I not supposed to do things well? Am I not supposed to go hard after things?  I could not make sense of that. I did not understand what that meant.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay so Leandro keeps pursuing Samantha, and not just for a few months — for several years. And then everything finally came to a head when Leandro himself moved to the United States to attend seminary.

LEANDRO LOZADA: And I thought this is the will of God. I am moving to a city that’s like about four hours away from where she is. This is totally God writing my love story.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so now Leandro, he’s at this crossroads. Uh, he’s been having this friendship with Samantha for several years, they’re no longer mega long-distance. At least they can get to each other now. Leandro knows it’s time for him to like take his shot. But he was also, he was just hesitant.

LEANDRO LOZADA: I would say that the fear of rejection played itself out all the time basically. 

RACHEL SZABO: Okay that’s interesting because that’s actually a really common fear. Okay so Jesse, going back to that survey that we sent out. One of the other questions that we asked on there was ‘Is there anything that would keep you from asking somebody out?’ And about half of all the men who answered said the one thing that would keep them from asking a girl out either had to do with fear of rejection or fear of causing some sort of damage to the friendship.

JESSE EUBANKS: I totally get this fear. Y’know, I was single once. I remember how terrifying it is to ask somebody out. I get that. Asking a girl out — it has risks. But also — almost everyone in our survey said they wanted to one day be married. I mean, 97% of people said they wanted to be married eventually. And also the majority of men from our survey said in the past two years, that they had only asked out one to three girls. In two years! So I don’t get that gap, that gap of ‘I eventually wanna be married, but in the last two years I’ve maybe only asked out one person.’ Like if I want to get in great shape, I don’t sit at home and go like ‘I want to be in great shape eventually.’ Like I have to go to the gym, I have to do the work, I have to put myself out there. And I guess in this situation, I don’t get how people think they’re going to eventually get something that they desire if they’re not taking the shot and they’re not taking those risks.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay so, back to Leandro. Did he take a shot? Did he ask Samantha out?

LEANDRO LOZADA: I think I finally pulled the trigger and I was like ‘Samantha, we need to do something. Like we need to move forward.’

RACHEL SZABO: And what’d she say?

JESSE EUBANKS: So Leandro took his shot, and it was a miss. Samantha said no.

RACHEL SZABO: Ahhh. That stinks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and it does stink because after that their friendship became really awkward, to the point where it eventually actually just fizzled out all together. So, y’know, Leandro did not get that Disney movie ending that he was hoping for. Like he got rejected, and it ruined the friendship.

LEANDRO LOZADA: I was afraid, miserable, oftentimes very, very depressed. I had a couple panic attacks, uh, at some points. A lot of shame, a lot of had I done this, had I done that, had I been such and such she would have said yes. And, y’know, it took me I don’t know how long, but it took me a while to try to recover from that. And understandably, we all know that if someone expresses romantic feelings for us and it’s not reciprocated, we can’t be close to them, like that’s the risk.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, but Jesse, this is only like further confirming what I said earlier was that if you don’t take the risk you can’t be hurt. You know what I mean? Like Leandro put himself out there, he took the risk, and like listen to him. It sucked. Like his life was miserable.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, in that moment in his life, his life sucked. But the story isn’t over yet. So even though it was painful, his emotions were all over the place, but deep inside Leandro knew that God had not made him to just be miserable all the time. And so eventually, he started spending time with another girl that he liked.

LEANDRO LOZADA: I mean, I did, I genuinely did better and my emotions did better, but better for me at that time was still pretty, pretty intense. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And again, his friends, his community around him — people keep telling him, ‘Listen, you’re single and you just need to be satisfied in Christ.’

LEANDRO LOZADA: And again I couldn’t reconcile it exactly. ‘Be satisfied in Christ,’ and I was trying to be satisfied in Christ. Like those were days in which I was reading four chapters of my Bible every day, I was serving at the church, and I was trying to honor God. And I could not reconcile ‘Okay, I know that Jesus satisfies, but I also like this girl. So how, how do I do this? I have no idea.’

JESSE EUBANKS: And it, it didn’t help that, y’know, Leandro kept hearing stories about how other couples had gotten together.

LEANDRO LOZADA: And one of them was my pastor. Y’know, one of my pastors at that time, he asked and asked and pursued and pursued and pursued and then she finally said yes and then they got married. So I was like ‘How, how did they do it? Were they loving God? Was Jesus enough for them at that time?’ So it’s a wonderful phrase, ‘Jesus satisfies,’ but it was not nuanced enough for me.

JESSE EUBANKS: So it ended up being the same story. So Leandro took the shot, she said no, they stopped being friends. And looking back, Leandro really wishes that he would have known then that life could still be very rich and full even as a single person.

LEANDRO LOZADA: If I could go back to my younger self and if I told him what I now know, I don’t know if he would listen. But I would like to tell him, ‘Hey, dude. Life is going to be okay if you’re single. Pay attention to the beauty that surrounds you. Pay attention to what you have right now. You love soccer. Go play soccer.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: Y’know, I don’t think that Leandro like suddenly learned how to be satisfied in Christ and because of that the Lord honored his life and blessed him with a wife. I don’t think that’s what happened. What I do think happened is that Leandro simultaneously sought trying to be satisfied in Christ but also he sought after the desires of his heart, which was he wanted to be married. And he just got married this past summer to neither one of the girls that he actually mentioned. And one of the things that he loves about his job here at Love Thy Neighborhood is that he gets to walk with and counsel young adults who are in the midst of navigating singleness.

LEANDRO LOZADA: ‘Jesus satisfies.’ Sometimes we give it a very spiritual meaning, and I think that is fair. It’s a very spiritual thing. But I think we need to give it flesh. We need to give it images.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, Jesse, I hear what Leandro is saying. I completely agree. Y’know, we should not be sitting around, be mopey. We need to do things with our lives, y’know, make the most of what God has given us, use our singleness to glorify him. But the reality is that for some of us who are single, we’re single because life has dealt us a really crappy hand. And when you’re in the thick of the downsides of singleness, I mean people can tell you whatever they want. The truth is the circumstances suck. And that was the experience of a woman named Jackie Ross. 

So Jackie is single, but she’s not 20-something and single. She’s single in this other category that sometimes the church doesn’t really know what to do with. 

JACKIE ROSS: Um, I’m divorced. Um, I was single through most, through all my 20’s. I got married at 30 and then was divorced at 35.

RACHEL SZABO: And from her previous marriage, Jackie also has a five-year-old daughter.

JACKIE ROSS: Now, after the age of 35, being single again and being a parent. Hmm, there’s just — I’ve said before I don’t think there’s a category for single parents in the church. Um, there just isn’t a category for us.

RACHEL SZABO: And, and I just want to make it clear that Jackie is divorced because her husband left her. But as it regards to her singleness, the thing that Jackie wanted to talk about actually wasn’t her divorce. It wasn’t even the hardships of being a single parent. The thing she wanted to talk about was probably something that a lot of single people want to talk about, but they just don’t.

JACKIE ROSS: I don’t know how this would come out and of course you don’t have to include it, but can, can I talk about sex for a minute?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay so, for the majority of single folks, they’re single and have never been married. Studies show that. And, y’know, in the Christian world, there’s a lot of emphasis put on ‘Don’t have sex until you’re married. Save sex for for marriage because that’s how God designed it.’ And yes, that’s biblical. And it’s exactly what Jackie did.

JACKIE ROSS: So in my situation, I grew up in the church, did everything quote unquote the right way, I saved myself for marriage, my ex-husband and I had a very, um, strict, y’know, physical boundaries in our dating relationship.

RACHEL SZABO: Essentially everything was perfect. They did everything the right way. Until divorce turned Jackie’s world upside down.

JACKIE ROSS: The emotion you have coming out of that or at least that I had was ‘What was this for?’ Y’know, I did things the right way. I thought I was going to have this husband, have this union with him for the rest of my life. I gave myself to him spiritually, physically, emotionally, and now that’s just gone. Poof, y’know, it disappeared. So it feels like I have been used, knocked up, and discarded. 

RACHEL SZABO: And, y’know, personally for me, when Jackie started talking about this, I realized how naive I actually was. Like it never even occurred to me that divorced people, widowed people struggle with sexual purity. Y’know, I thought, ‘Okay, someone’s divorced. They’re dealing with a lot of emotional damage, relational damage, probably some trust issues, things like that. But sex? I had no idea.

JACKIE ROSS: You’re just reeling with all these different emotions. Um, I mean I felt like a crazy person, just so anxious and so desiring attention from a man and sexual attention, um, just at, at a very heightened level.

RACHEL SZABO: And the unfortunate thing is, y’know, when it comes to singleness and talking about sex, oftentimes either the church is silent on the issue or they just offer quippy statements like ‘Well Jesus is your husband.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, but Jesus can’t like spoon with you at night. Like at the end of the day, y’know, Jesus can’t sit there and like hold your hand, y’know, while you watch Parks and Rec together on Netflix. Like there’s a sense in which she misses a human being being by her side. And like, I get that.

RACHEL SZABO: Right, and so the place that Jackie sought help for what she was going through actually wasn’t the church. It was her divorce therapy group.

JACKIE ROSS: Because that was a safe place. Um, and I honestly, if I had been in biblical counseling or at a Christian counselor, I don’t think I would have shared as openly, um, for fear of being judged. Or just, I think maybe not even judgment, but just a fear of being told, ‘Okay, these are like unholy urges that you’re having. You just need to stop and let’s pray and read the Bible and just stop.’

RACHEL SZABO: And here’s one thing that really inspired me. So for Jackie, she’s been given this really difficult circumstance. She’s divorced, she’s a single parent. But she didn’t let all of this loneliness that she was feeling and all of this sexual tension that she was wrestling through dictate what she was going to do with her life. Like Jackie looked around, she took inventory and said ‘Here’s the circumstance that I’m in. What am I going to do with it?’ And she stepped up, and she continued to live her life.

JACKIE ROSS: Not that I don’t think about marriage again, but buying a home, y’know, settling down. This is a home that is just enough for myself and my daughter. It’s not with the thought of accepting, y’know, a new spouse or step-children into that home. There’s not enough room, y’know?

JESSE EUBANKS: Y’know, one of the things we like to say as Christians to our single friends is we’ll tell them, y’know, ‘God will give you the desires of your heart.’ And that phrase actually comes from Psalm 37 verse four — ‘Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ And when we say that to single people, typically what we mean is if you’re following God then one day you’ll be married. 

RACHEL SZABO: Right, and so far for Jackie that’s not true. But what I love is she’s not waiting around for it to happen. Y’know, she’s building a life for her and her daughter. And actually what’s interesting is no one ever quotes the verse that comes right before that one about God giving you the desires of your heart. The first that comes right before it says this — ‘Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.’ So it doesn’t say ‘trust in the Lord and wait for him to bring you a spouse.’ It says ‘do good, dwell in the land.’ In other words, live your life. Take what God has given you and make something out of it. Be active. Which honestly for me is easier said than done. And so this has been really great,  y’know, we’ve talked about be realistic with your expectations, we’ve talked about if you wanna be married you’ve gotta take your shot, we’ve talked about live with what’s been given to you. But here’s the thing. At the end of the day I’m still single and I go home and I have roommates and they’re awesome, but they’re roommates. They’re not a spouse, they’re not kids, they’re not a family. And so there’s still something missing. I still wanna know, as a single person how can I be relationally satisfied?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, listen. I think that that’s a fair question. I would like to answer that question, but I am not the person that can answer that for you. I think that the person that can answer that for you is actually across the pond — in England. 

RACHEL SZABO: What?

JESSE EUBANKS: We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets singleness.

JESSE EUBANKS: So you and I have been talking all episode long basically about this question — how can single people be satisfied? 

RACHEL SZABO: Right.

JESSE EUBANKS: I think to get to the heart of that question and to get a real answer we actually need to leave the United States in order to talk to this guy.

SAM ALLBERRY: In the U.K., we have had a long legacy of really great single evangelical pastors.

JESSE EUBANKS: So this is Sam Allberry, and Sam is a pastor in the U.K. He’s also an author, and Sam is kind of an expert on singleness. And part of the reason for that is that Sam has always been single and actually anticipates that he’ll be single for the rest of his life voluntarily. The reason for that is that Sam is same-sex attracted. 

SAM ALLBERRY: I began to realize I was same-sex attracted in my teenage years, so kind of during high school. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And early in his faith Sam really didn’t think that his sexuality was gonna be too much of a hindrance. 

SAM ALBERRY: I just assumed ‘Well, God will change my feelings anyway cuz I’m a Christian now.’ I knew that I wanted to get married one day. I wanted to marry a good Christian girl, have a family. Surely that’s the kind of plan God likes and will bless.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so here’s the thing — that Sam actually has a personal conviction that he does not believe that God wants him to live out of his same-sex attraction and that God’s desire is not for him to be in a same-sex relationship. But he still did want a family, and y’know, believing that God gives you the desires of your heart, he thought, ‘Okay, this will work itself out.’ 

SAM ALBERRY: And I even had a time scale. I remember turning 21 thinking ‘I want to be a dad by the time I’m 30 at the latest, so I should probably have met someone and be marrying kind of around the age of 25, maybe wait a couple of years and then start having kids.’ So I had a timeframe all kind of mapped out.

JESSE EUBANKS: There was only one problem though with this.

SAM ALBERRY: I just had overlooked the slightly incidental aspect of the fact that I wasn’t attracted to women. And that just never resolved, that aspect of it never resolved.

JESSE EUBANKS: And so, even though he was single, Sam did what he felt called to do — he went to seminary, he became the pastor of a church near London. And this is precisely why we needed to leave the United States. Okay, Rachel. Name some famous Christian leaders in America.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, uh, like John Piper, Tim Keller, Francis Chan? Is that what you’re looking for? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, perfect. How many of those men are single?

RACHEL SZABO: None.

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. But that is actually not the case in Great Britain.

SAM ALBERRY: So we’ve had pastors like John Stott, Dick Lucas, and others actually who’ve all been single, but it means we’ve always had that category of the single pastor.

JESSE EUBANKS: So in the U.K., being single and a Christian — it’s not as weird as it is here in the United States. A fact which Sam honestly still finds shocking.

SAM ALBERRY: The impression I get in the States is that very few churches would take seriously a single pastor applying for a pastoral position, and I think the assumption is if you’re single at this stage of life there’s probably something wrong with you. And I’ve said to a number of American churches you would happily have Paul as your apostle but you wouldn’t have him as your pastor, and that doesn’t add up.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh shoot. Did he just say that?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and for Sam, it isn’t just the culture that helps him thrive in his singleness. He is satisfied in his singleness because he actually does have a family. And that family — it’s his church.

SAM ALBERRY: And I’ve got a little side table in my, my living room with a pot on it that has three or four house keys that I’ve been given by different families that I know. So they’re saying not just ‘we like having you around, but you now have the freedom to come around whenever you like. You don’t have to wait to be invited. You don’t have to wait for it to be a good time. Uh, you can just let yourself in.’ And that to me speaks very deeply of being thought of as family. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And what Sam is saying here is the answer to our loneliness isn’t having a spouse and 2.5 kids. The answer to our loneliness is remembering that God has already taken care of us by placing every single one of us as children into his family.

SAM ALBERRY: The New Testament, it so routinely talks about us in familial terms. It’s so familiar to us we don’t notice it, but we are brothers and sisters. The church is the household or the family of God. Paul tells Timothy to treat older men as fathers and older women as mothers and younger men as brothers and younger women as sisters, so not just to treat them as kind of extended family but as close family. And so much of New Testament thought is predicated on the notion that we are family. You can’t avoid it.

RACHEL SZABO: For me, hearing Sam talk about the church being your family, I’ve actually experienced this. One thing that comes to mind, Jesse, is actually — I babysit your kids all the time, and the last time I was over there actually I was watching them overnight. You guys were away on a trip. And Evangeline’s tooth fell out. And your wife gets on the phone and is like ‘Hey, I need you to be the tooth fairy tonight.’ And that was a really like precious moment for me because that’s not something that I’ll experience otherwise. I don’t have kids, like I don’t get to be Santa Claus, I don’t get to be the tooth fairy. And so it’s just very sweet that I was let in to your family. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and I think on the other side, y’know, eventually when you have a spouse and then you have kids, the number of fixed commitments that you have in life just continues to grow, which means that you have less and less flexibility. I think there’s a false idea out there that two parents and the kids, that they can have a self-sustaining household. We rely on our single friends all the time to help us function and make it in life. But the flip side too is just showing hospitality to each other, y’know, whether it’s you or other single friends coming to our house and being around, y’know, being around when we’re doing laundry or putting our kids to bed or we’re working through homework or, y’know, goofing off in our backyard. Our single friends are part of that experience, y’know. And so I think it’s important that married people always take a second and back up and ask themselves — ‘For us as married people, what would it look like to treat the single folks in our church as family?’

So in Mark chapter three, Jesus asks the question — ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And he then goes on to give the answer — “And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’” Y’know, Jesus knows what it is to be single, to not have a spouse, to not have children, to feel lonely, to feel abandoned. And yet Jesus also knows exactly what it is to be satisfied and to feel and to experience the richness of God’s love throughout his life, a truth which Sam Allberry finds greatly encouraging.

SAM ALBERRY: He knows more about this than I do and has been through a far worse version of this than I ever will, and so that does make a difference to think, ‘Okay, he gets this, he’s not unsympathetic, he’s not rolling his eyes that I find this difficult at times.’ 

RACHEL SZABO: I think it’s important to say this too, y’know, we talked about having unrealistic expectations in regards to dating, and I think that’s true as it pertains to the church as well. Y’know, we live in a fallen world, people have busy lives. And so there are gonna be times as single people when we need to hang out with somebody and everyone’s just busy, but that’s okay because our hope is not here on this earth. Our hope is that there is a day coming to where it will be perfect. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and I think Sam agrees with you. In fact, I really appreciated one of the final thoughts that he shared. He talked about what marriage really is and what marriage is pointing toward.

SAM ALBERRY: The hope for the single person is that actually we are perfectly married in Christ and in the age to come we will not be married kind of humanly speaking because we will have the ultimate marriage in Jesus, which means I’m not ultimately missing out. I’m missing out on the foretaste of that. I’m not missing out on the reality of it. And I think for married people the hope is the same because marriage isn’t always easy. And I know some people who are, who are unhappily married. I know some people who are even lonelier even in marriage. So the hope for them is, again, there is the perfect marriage that awaits all of us.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so Rach, how’s online dating going?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay so, I made a profile. And so far I’ve gotten a message from some guy in Florida who’s a Jehovah’s Witness and some other guy in Washington, D.C. But y’know, I took some shots. Nothing’s happened yet. Y’know, we’ll see where it goes.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, you tried something new.

RACHEL SZABO: I did. And if I’m feeling lonely about it, y’know, I’ll just come hang out at your house. 

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s a deal.

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you’d like to explore the topic of singleness even more, Sam Allberry has a new book coming out this February called ‘Seven Myths about Singleness.’ It’s a book for the whole church that he hopes will help reshape some of our understanding of what it means to be single. You can pre-order his book on Amazon or wherever good books are sold. Also, we have this incredible piece that we were not able to include in today’s episode from spoken word artist D Sway. As she was preparing this piece, she actually spoke to a lot of single folks and asked them — ‘What messages have you heard about being single in the church?’ She then compiled all of their answers into this incredibly moving spoken word piece. The music for the piece comes from Murphy DX. And you can hear this bonus content by heading over to lovethyneighborhood.org/LTNpodcast. For more resources or to hear past episodes of this podcast, visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/podcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode — Sarah Martin, Leandro Lozada, Jackie Ross, and Sam Allberry. Special thanks also to everyone who participated in our online survey. You helped us make this episode possible. We hope to include more things like that in the future, so be on the lookout for more opportunities to participate.

RACHEL SZABO: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host is Rachel Szabo, who is also our producer, technical director, editor, and valedictorian of her homeschool class. Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX.

RACHEL SZABO: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’